


Soon You Will Be Free

by wickedg



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-31
Updated: 2013-03-31
Packaged: 2017-12-07 01:07:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 664
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/742322
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wickedg/pseuds/wickedg
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>(Written for the ASOIAFKinkMeme)</p><p>Prompt: One of the surviving Starks puts what they perceive to be a merciful end to Lady Stoneheart. Another surviving Stark has a hard time accepting this and feels like their sibling murdered their mother. (Neither should be Jon, please - some combo of Sansa, Arya, Bran, Rickon)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Soon You Will Be Free

**Author's Note:**

> The one who taught him right from wrong, don't leave this world to me

The blade slices through the woman, the _mother,_ like it would soft butter wrapped in oiled paper. There isn’t much left to her, to Lady Catelyn Stark, to Lady Stoneheart. Her eyes are not the same, nor even her face that still begs familiarity to the loving lady mother once well known within the walls of Winterfell.  
  
Her footsteps are quiet in the clearing, the crunch of frost muffled by wind, and it is easy to find the Brotherhood, to watch with her grey eyes as they keep an eye on Lady Stoneheart, as they keep their distance as well. Needle rests on her back, light as a twig compared to the dagger in her boot, the newer, cruder blade on her hip. It is an eternal debate that a child should never go through, she thinks bitterly, of how to kill one’s mother.  
  
But father was waiting. And mother was kept here by sorcery, by an ill-lit flame begging to be snuffed.  
  
She steels herself, reaching back for the now small, leather worn pommel from her back, and tells herself it will be a clean death, befitting the former Lady Stark.  
  
 _She is not my mother. Not anymore._  
  
She watches as the ghostly figure moves further away from the men huddled about the fire, and decides she’ll deal with them later.  
  
Whatever that entails.  
  
It is the loudest breath she thinks she has ever inhaled, exhaled, since her time in Braavos, and yet she is still not heard. Her breath steams the air in little puffs, and it is with a shiver that she finally notices there is nothing coming from the lady’s mouth.  
  
 _She is not my mother. Not anymore._  
  
The blade slides seamlessly from upon her back, and she can barely blink before there is another shadow before her, creeping in the night with a sharpened spear that they thrust up into her mother’s torso, the point briefly flashing out of her scarred and greying neck, stained with blackened blood, inking the snowy patches around them.  
  
Arya’s eyes widen at the attack, so fast and slick that it takes her a moment to recognise the red hair flashing in the moonlit sky. _Bran_. No, not Bran, she thinks, shaking her head. Bran cannot walk any longer.  
  
Well. Neither could mother.  
  
 _She is not my mother._  
  
The figure glances her way, and it is too dark to make out a face, but the black direwolf that trots up beside him has Arya mouthing his name in disbelief.  
  
Rickon.  
  
Little baby Rickon is who she follows back to his little camp, a cave by the mouth of a river, somehow warmer than the weather outside would have them believe, eerily lit by glowworms on the ceiling, a peaceful inside sky dotted with green-like stars.  
  
“Who are you?” He snarls, as he sits next to Shaggydog ( _Shaggydog...a name for a child_ ), sharpening his spear, not even sparing her a glance.  
  
“You killed my mother.” She replies, voice soft.  
  
It is quiet and for a moment he pauses in his action before continuing to scrape rock over bone.  
  
“She was mine to kill.” He finally says and for the first time in a long time Arya can feel the heat inside of her, blooming up from her belly and into her heart, shaking her jaw with its intensity. Her eyes feel like they are about to melt. “I killed her quickly, and cleanly. She deserved no less.” He continues and Arya wants to scream.  
  
 _She was my mother._  
  
“How could you?” Her voice betrays her, shaking a little.  
  
He turns to her then, and his blue eyes, eyes a colour she never thought to see again, eyes the colour of the mother he just killed, stare at her, attempting to recognise the sister he knows he had lost long ago.  
  
“She was not our mother. Not anymore.” He says, voice deep and gruff as he stands before her, looming over her with his wolf.


End file.
